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2024 ASCAP Lab “AI and the Business of Music” Challenge Teams Revealed

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Upcoming ASCAP VERSED Podcast Explores Benefits of Teams’ Music Industry Tools

NEW YORK, Oct. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — The ASCAP Lab, ASCAP’s innovation initiative, announces the cohort for the 2024 AI and the Business of Music Challenge. The ASCAP Lab Challenge brings together the society’s senior strategy, operations and legal experts; key ASCAP writer, composer and publisher members; and some of the most promising music tech entrepreneurs and early-stage startups in an effort to shape how artificial intelligence(AI) tools can benefit music creators. This year’s ASCAP Lab Challenge explored commercial solutions enabled by AI that can transform music industry workflows, business processes and data exchanges.

To highlight the 2024 ASCAP Lab Challenge teams, VERSED: The ASCAP Podcast will debut “The ASCAP Lab Gets Down to Business with AI” on October 24. The episode will feature this year’s entrepreneurs explaining their innovations and how the industry can leverage these advances. ASCAP composer and producer Gregg Lehrman (trailers for Avatar, Inglourious Basterds) will share his experience as one of the mentors for the Challenge teams and as a startup founder himself.

Launched in 2020, the annual ASCAP Lab Challenge is an accelerator program, operated in partnership with the NYC Media Lab led by the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, that provides selected startups and university teams with mentorship and small grants to develop and expand upon their emerging technologies during the 12-week program. The ASCAP Lab works closely with each selected team to optimize its product development for the music creator community. It is one way in which the ASCAP Lab explores the intersection of technology, art and business to drive value for music creators and users.

ASCAP Chief Strategy and Digital Officer Nick Lehman said: “ASCAP’s creator-first, future-forward commitment makes it imperative for us to embrace technology while simultaneously protecting the rights of creators. The dialogue, understanding and relationships that the ASCAP Lab Challenge creates with the music startup community enable us to drive progress for the industry and deliver on this commitment.”

The 2024 ASCAP Lab Challenge teams are:

CRESQA: An AI social media content assistant designed for songwriters and musicians that automates the process of social media strategy development and helps generate fully personalized post ideas and schedules for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, Facebook and more. https://cresqa.com/

Music Tomorrow: Analytics tools that monitor and boost artists’ algorithmic performance on streaming platforms, using AI for advanced audience insights and automation that improve an artist’s content discoverability, listener engagement and team efficiency. https://www.music-tomorrow.com/

RoEx: AI-driven tools for multitrack mixing, mastering, audio cleanup and quality control, designed to streamline and enhance the last steps of the creative process by delivering a professional and balanced mix with ease. http://www.roexaudio.com

SoundSafe.ai: Robust, state-of-the-art audio watermarking using AI to enhance security, reporting and the detection of real-time piracy and/or audio deepfakes. http://www.SoundSafe.ai

Wavelets AI: Tools for artists, labels, copyright holders, content distributors and DSPs that help reduce IP infringement by detecting AI vocals in music. https://wavelets.ai/

This year’s ASCAP Lab Challenge program expands upon the 2023 Challenge, which focused on startups utilizing AI for making and experiencing music. The story of the 2023 Challenge is captured in an ASCAP Lab-produced documentary short “Prelude in AI Major: Crafting a Creator-First Future for AI.” The film takes an in-depth look at the 2023 Challenge teams and how they leveraged AI to build innovative tools for making and experiencing music, informed by their own backgrounds as composers and musicians. ASCAP mentors, including songwriter and composer members, shared their experiences guiding the teams in developing their technologies and exploring the copyright implications of their work.

As part of its ongoing effort to educate ASCAP members on AI, ASCAP has hosted panels and symposia on the creative possibilities and legal challenges of the technology in Los Angeles, New York and Nashville. The New York and Nashville sessions are available on demand on the ASCAP YouTube Channel:

“How Creators Are Unlocking the Potential of Artificial Intelligence“”Navigating AI for Music Creators: Legal & Copyright Issues“”Melody, Lyrics & Algorithm: Music Creators in the Age of AI“”Navigating AI: Evolving Legal & Policy Frameworks“

Additional past ASCAP Lab programming available on demand includes:

“NFTs: What Every Music Creator Needs to Know” – Presented by the ASCAP Lab, this 2022 ASCAP Experience panel features experts CrossBorderWorks CEO Vickie Nauman, nft now CEO Matt Medved and writer/producer/artist Poo Bear explaining non-fungible tokens, how to buy NFTs and some of the best use cases for music NFTs – to create collectibles, build community, foster direct fan access and more.“Music in the Metaverse: 4 Startups Shaping our New (Extended) Reality” – The metaverse is an immersive platform for creativity, community and identity, rich in potential for music creators and their fans. This ASCAP Experience panel presented by the ASCAP Lab features the 2022 Challenge teams demonstrating new ways to create and experience music, express digital identity through music, and connect music creators and fans in the metaverse.

More information on the ASCAP Lab can be found at https://www.ascap.com/ascap-lab.

About ASCAP
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a membership association of more than one million songwriters, composers and music publishers, and represents some of the world’s most talented music creators. In 2023, ASCAP reported record-high financial results of $1.737 billion in revenues and $1.592 billion available in royalty distribution monies to its members. Over the last eight years, ASCAP has delivered a 7% compound annual growth rate for total revenues, and an 8% compound annual growth rate for total royalty distributions to members. Founded and governed by songwriters, composers and publishers, it is the only performing rights organization in the U.S. that operates on a not-for-profit basis. ASCAP licenses a repertory of over 20 million musical works to hundreds of thousands of businesses that use music, including streaming services, cable television, radio and satellite radio and brick and mortar businesses such as retail stores, hotels, clubs, restaurants and bars. ASCAP collects the licensing fees; identifies, matches and processes trillions of performances every year; and returns nearly 90 cents of every dollar back to its members as royalties. The ASCAP blanket license offers an efficient solution for businesses to legally perform ASCAP music while respecting the right of songwriters and composers to be paid fairly. ASCAP puts music creators first, advocating for their rights and the value of music on Capitol Hill, driving innovation that moves the industry forward, building community and providing the resources and support that creators need to succeed in their careers. Learn more and stay in touch at www.ascap.com, on X and Instagram @ASCAP and on Facebook.

About the NYC Media Lab
The NYC Media Lab connects media and technology companies with both NYU Tandon and industry affiliates to drive innovation, entrepreneurship and talent development. Our interdisciplinary community of innovators from industry and academia allows our network to gain valuable insights, explore the potential of emerging technology and address the challenges and opportunities created by the rapidly evolving digital media landscape. Learn more at engineering.nyu.edu/nyc-media-lab.

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SOURCE ASCAP – American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers

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ModelBest and OpenBMB Open-Source MiniCPM-OCR Series, Delivering High-Performance Document Parsing and AI-Powered Quality Control

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BEIJING, Oct. 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ModelBest and OpenBMB jointly announced the release and open-source availability of the MiniCPM-OCR series, a family of models for efficient document parsing and parsing-quality assessment. The launch includes two models: MiniCPM-OCR 1.0 (1.3B) and MiniCPM-OCR Jev (2B).

As the first OCR-focused model in the MiniCPM family, MiniCPM-OCR 1.0 brings top-tier parsing accuracy to a compact 1.3-billion-parameter architecture optimized for edge deployment, pushing forward the balance between efficiency and performance for open-source OCR models. Built for real-world conditions, it accurately parses scanned, photographed, curved, tilted and screen-captured documents without cumbersome image pre-correction, lowering the barrier to large-scale document digitization.

The model handles dense bilingual Chinese-English content, complex mathematical formulas, and multi-level or borderless tables, consistently performing at a leading level across a broad range of mainstream industry evaluations. Beyond full-page reconstruction, it supports key information extraction (KIE), pulling specified fields from invoices, IDs and financial statements according to business instructions.

Powered by DSpark decoding acceleration, MiniCPM-OCR 1.0 significantly increases end-to-end throughput while lowering per-page latency. For enterprises processing millions of pages—such as financial contract archives, academic libraries and government records—this means processing far more documents with the same hardware and time budget, at a substantially lower computing cost.

To address the long-standing need for page-by-page manual review, ModelBest and OpenBMB also introduced MiniCPM-OCR Jev, the first OCR result decision model that acts as an “AI quality inspector.” Rather than performing OCR itself, Jev compares the source image with OCR output and rapidly assigns confidence scores to text, LaTeX formulas and tables, detecting missing characters, errors and formatting misalignments. Despite its compact 2B-parameter size, Jev delivers judgment accuracy typically associated with far larger models.

Jev supports cross-model deployment and can be integrated into existing OCR workflows without replacing the underlying OCR engine. It can automatically identify reliable results for direct processing, flag potentially inaccurate outputs for human review and select the best result from multiple OCR systems. This enables enterprises to move from full manual inspection toward risk-based, automated quality control.

The MiniCPM-OCR series is available on GitHub, Hugging Face and ModelScope, and supports vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Ollama, along with SDKs, APIs, Agent Skill plugins and open-source fine-tuning code. Day-0 hardware adaptation covers AMD, Arm, Houmo AI, Intel and NVIDIA. Through the FlagOS software stack, it also has Day-0 support for AI and edge chips from CIX Technology, Huawei Ascend, Hygon, Iluvatar CoreX, Kunlunxin, MetaX, Moore Threads, Sunrise, T-Head, TsingMicro, NVIDIA and Apple Mac (Arm).

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SOURCE ModelBest

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Wulcea Elevates Consumer Trust in Heated Apparel Through Multi-National Safety Certifications and Rigorous Technical Testing

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NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — As smart heated clothing gains broader adoption, consumers are paying closer attention to the safety and reliability of the technology behind these products. Wulcea, a brand specializing in graphene-powered heated apparel, combines its flexible GrapheneNano™ heating technology with documented safety compliance and durability testing for its heating components and battery systems.

“Trust in smart heated apparel goes beyond warmth—it comes down to confidence in battery safety and heating element reliability,” said John C, Founder of Wulcea. “Our goal is to give users peace of mind through certified technical standards.”

Advanced Graphene Heating Elements Supported by Global Standards

At the core of Wulcea’s thermal architecture is its GrapheneNano™ heating technology. Engineered to eliminate garment stiffness, Wulcea integrates flexible graphene elements that deliver balanced warmth across key upper-body zones while preserving natural garment drape and full freedom of movement.

Wulcea supports its heating components with applicable compliance documentation for major markets. These include CE and FCC compliance documentation addressing relevant electrical and electromagnetic compatibility requirements, as well as PSE compliance for applicable products in Japan. RoHS compliance further addresses restrictions on specified hazardous substances in applicable electrical and electronic components.

Multi-Certified Battery System for Dependable Power

To power its heating elements, Wulcea pairs its heated apparel with rechargeable battery systems designed for convenient everyday use. Featuring a compact design and housed in dedicated interior pockets, the batteries provide portable power while maintaining a streamlined garment profile and comfortable fit.

Wulcea backs its battery options with comprehensive third-party accreditations. UL certification demonstrates that the battery system has been evaluated against recognized power bank safety requirements, covering key areas such as overcharge protection, short-circuit protection, and thermal safety. The battery systems are also supported by applicable CE and FCC compliance documentation, addressing relevant regulatory requirements for electrical and electromagnetic compatibility.

For daily handling and travel, RoHS compliance validates that the battery system meets stringent global standards for material safety. The battery models have also undergone applicable UN 38.3 testing, supporting compliance with international requirements for lithium battery transportation.

Real-World Durability and Practical Usability

Component compliance forms Wulcea’s foundation, but reliability is defined by real-world performance. Built for high-flex endurance, Wulcea’s flexible graphene heating elements are tested through 10,000 active flexing cycles to maintain steady thermal output through repeated bending and everyday body movement.

Everyday convenience is equally essential. Built for hassle-free care, Wulcea’s heating elements withstand 100 machine-wash cycles under standard care guidelines, maintaining internal conductivity and structural stability under repeated laundering.

Integrated NTC temperature sensors provide thermal monitoring and are designed to stop heating if temperatures exceed 131°F (55°C). Combined with runtime of up to 10 hours on the low setting and a discreet interior control button, these features support practical everyday use in cold-weather conditions.

Aligning Technical Standards with Everyday Warmth

By combining graphene-based heating technology with documented battery safety compliance and durability testing, Wulcea continues to focus on the technical foundations of dependable heated apparel. This approach reflects the brand’s emphasis on bringing together safety considerations, practical functionality, and everyday comfort for cold-weather use.

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SOURCE Wulcea

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NIDS Co., Ltd. Confirms CES 2027 Participation, Pursues Expansion of Global Supply Chain for Environmental Sensors

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Company introduced optical and gas sensors at SEDEX and is strengthening its composite sensor business for robotics, home appliances, automotive, and smart building applications

SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Environmental sensor manufacturer NIDS Co., Ltd. has confirmed its participation in CES 2027 and is moving to expand its global business-to-business (B2B) supply chain. Building on its experience supplying sensors to domestic and international home appliance and automotive companies, the company aims to secure overseas customers and extend its applications into smart building HVAC and robotics.

NIDS recently participated in the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association’s Sensor Pavilion at SEDEX 2026, held at COEX in Seoul, where it introduced its next-generation sensor modules. The company said the exhibition allowed it to raise awareness of its technology among domestic home appliance and electronic component industry professionals and to lay the groundwork for collaboration in the sensor field.

The company will use CES 2027 as its next stage. NIDS plans to firm up discussions on sensor module supply with global home appliance makers, HVAC specialists, and robotics companies. It aims to extend the industry contacts gained at the domestic exhibition overseas and to convert product introductions into actual supply opportunities.

Founded in 2000, NIDS develops and manufactures environmental sensors and air quality management solutions. According to the company, it has supplied more than 10 million sensors cumulatively to domestic and international companies, including Dyson, Samsung Electronics, and Hyundai Motor. Drawing on this supply track record, the company intends to showcase its precision sensing technology and mass-production capabilities to overseas customers.

Its main products include particulate matter sensors, optical gas sensors based on non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) technology, composite environmental sensors, and electronic nose sensor modules. The particulate matter sensors measure PM1.0, PM2.5, and PM10, while the gas sensor lineup targets carbon dioxide (CO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), and other gases. The electronic nose is used for detecting everyday odors, gas leaks, and fires. The company said it designs the core components required for air quality measurement in-house and has a system in place to mass-produce 5 million units annually.

The area where NIDS will expand development and supply going forward is next-generation composite sensor modules. The company has been pursuing a sensor business that responds to industry-specific demand in home appliances, automotive, and smart building HVAC, and is now concentrating its capabilities on markets such as robotics, industrial safety, and odor detection based on this technology. Building on its experience supplying individual components, NIDS plans to continue developing and supplying, on a B2B basis, modules that handle multiple types of environmental data.

The company will also highlight its sensor product lineup and its newly developed ultra-compact MEMS sensor technology at the exhibition. NIDS plans to introduce its optical and gas sensor lineup along with examples of their application in actual air quality management systems. By explaining both the measurement functions of its components and its experience operating sensors for finished-product services, the company aims to broaden the scope of partnership discussions.

NIDS explained that, because it owns its precision sensors, it can control sensor sensitivity and tune algorithms to suit the system in which they are applied. Drawing on this technical operating experience, the company plans to pursue partnerships with customers and to promote its business capabilities extending from sensor components to air quality and odor management and industrial safety management.

NIDS will also leverage its existing branch network in its overseas market development. Through its overseas bases in the United States, Japan, and China, the company plans to widen its touchpoints with buyers and seek new supply opportunities in conjunction with its CES participation. Its goal is to generate export results by combining exhibition participation with its local networks.

The company intends to keep expanding the global supply of sensor components as a core pillar of its business. Building on the supply experience accumulated in home appliances and automotive, it will broaden its partners to robotics, HVAC, and smart buildings, and respond to industry-specific air quality measurement demand through the development of next-generation modules.

“We plan to continue expanding the development and B2B supply of next-generation composite sensor modules needed across a range of industries, including home appliances, automotive, and smart building HVAC,” NIDS said.

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SOURCE NIDS Co., Ltd.

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